Tag: live phone tracking

“Being able to share my race experience with my family and others with an improved level of detail via RaceJoy was pretty awesome.”

Rob Gomez

On May 14, Rob Gomez, placed first and won the Maine Coast Marathon with a finish time of 2:34 averaging 5:54 minute miles. Rob’s time would have been even less if it weren’t for an unintentional detour at the race caused by a volunteer accidently sending people the wrong way (something we actually see more than you would expect and something all race organizers and runners clearly wish to avoid). It was a cold and rainy day and Rob chose to run with his phone and use RaceJoy so that his family could track his location and progress since they could not make it to the race site.

We get some of the faster elite runners using RaceJoy, but many prefer not to carry their phone and are concerned that the extra weight might slow them down. Clearly, this was not an issue for Rob as he flew through the course.

We asked Rob a few questions about using RaceJoy…

-Why did you use RaceJoy?

Both my mom and my daughter wanted to follow my progress in the race but neither could make it to the course to watch in person. So, I thought using the RaceJoy app would be a great way for them to follow my progress more closely from afar than more traditional online tracking methods allow.

-Were you concerned that carrying your phone would slow you down?

A little bit, but I had run with my phone in my hand on numerous occasions before, even during workouts, and I realized that it didn’t bother me that much to carry it that way. It was raining pretty hard on race day so before the race I just started the tracking on the app and then put my phone in a Ziploc bag before stuffing it in an iPhone carrying arm band. The phone stayed perfectly dry and the arm band kept the phone close to my shoulder and therefore closer to my center of mass; that way, I was able to expend less energy carrying the phone during the race (as opposed to carrying it in my hand). Besides, an iPhone 6S is only a little over 3oz, so we’re not talking a lot of weight. In the end, carrying the phone didn’t bother me at all. An extra 3oz of weight isn’t going to slow anyone down very much – we’re talking maybe a few seconds over the course of an entire marathon. I was more than willing to make that trade-off.

-What was your experience with using RaceJoy? Did you like it? Did those tracking you like using it?

RaceJoy has a very easy-to-use and self-explanatory interface and it performed exactly how I expected it would. Not only were my family members able to follow along without any trouble, I found out after I had finished that other folks were following my progress as well on the app. Being able to share my race experience with my family and others with an improved level of detail via RaceJoy was pretty awesome.

RaceJoy was designed to meet the needs of all runners. Our initial planning meetings included a product roadmap that met the needs of what we call the “Serious Steves”, the “Novice Nancies”, and the “Fit & Fun Fran & Frank”. Where cheers may mean a lot to the first time marathoner, the Serious Steve may be more interested in just having the ability for others to track his/her progress with mile splits.

If we could, we also would recognize the slowest runner/walker in RaceJoy since those coming in last have an equally impressive story to tell. We’ve talked to many of you and know the struggles you have faced and the determination it takes to keep going and complete the goal you set out to accomplish. During the race, we live monitor the race field from RaceJoy’s monitoring system and we don’t stop until the last runner is in. If you are in the last of the pack and are using RaceJoy, know that one of us is tracking you and rooting you on!

For those of you that would like some coaching guidance on your running, Rob is actually a personal coach and offers a variety of options for all types of runners that you can do with him remotely. He has a strong background in running and in 2013 was New England Runner Magazine’s Maine Runner of the Year. Clearly, he knows what he is doing! You can find more information here: https://www.easternshoretraining.com/.

Thanks, Rob, and all of you who use RaceJoy and continue to support us in changing the race experience. We will catch you at the next race!

With a growing number of running race options to choose from, event organizers are looking for ways to add to their race experience. Rock the Parkway Kansas City Half Marathon and 5K took place this last weekend and is one of the most popular half marathons in the Midwest. The race sells out every year and is known to offer a scenic course with talented live band entertainment throughout the course. Race organizers decided to up the race experience by getting their courses loaded into the RaceJoy app so that participants had the option to be live tracked real-time on the course and receive fun audio cheers from their supporting spectators.

Rock the Parkway had 345 people use RaceJoy on race day. 163 phones were tracked live on the course and 740 cheers were sent out by supporting fans.

In addition, participants were able to try out RaceJoy’s newest GPS progress alerts feature and receive audio performance updates at every mile on the course. Spectators also received these alerts letting them know how their runner/walker was doing real-time. RaceJoy issued more than 4,200 GPS-timed progress alerts during the race.

Participants took full advantage of RaceJoy’s features by also having these progress updates automatically posted to their Facebook and Twitter walls.

On race day, friends and family in 25 different states across the country and 78 cities used RaceJoy to support race participants, with the heaviest support from spectators in Missouri, Illinois and Kansas.

We often are asked by races what they should do to help let participants know their race is in RaceJoy and Rock the Parkway provided great examples on how to get the word out. Specifically, Rock the Parkway included a full page on RaceJoy in its Participant Guide (see page 12).

They also posted the following on their Facebook wall the day before the race:

Thank you, Rock the Parkway, for embracing RaceJoy and helping to bring innovation to the race experience!

If you are a race organizer and would like to get your race added to RaceJoy, simply enable RaceJoy in the RunSignUp GO platform and provide your course map electronically (KML, GPX or link to map). You can also email this to addrace@racejoy.com. We require a minimum of two weeks to load and will send you notice and promotion toolkit once it is active. This is free to the event and the participant and spectator pay a 99 cents per race upgrade fee. Buyout options are available for race organizers to offer RaceJoy to participants and spectators for free. View our PhoneTrak Pricing Flyer for more information.

RunSignUp’s RaceJoy GPS tracking was in full swing this last weekend at the Charlottesville Marathon in Charlottesville, Virginia. A total of 225 race participants and spectators accessed RaceJoy for live phone tracking, cheer sending and progress alerts. On race day, 44 phones were tracked and close to 400 cheers were sent to race participants for both the half and full marathon.

Live tracking of runners at the Charlottesville Marathon:

We have been fine-tuning GPS Progress Alerts, as it is a balance between providing high accuracy and preserving the phone’s battery life. Without the progress alerts, our tests have consistently shown at least seven hours of battery life for live GPS tracking. At the Charlottesville Marathon, we tracked several full marathoners for more than six hours on the course. We are still perfecting this, but it looks like we have the adaptive algorithms at a good place.

Race participant, Donovan, had this to say about RaceJoy:

“I enjoyed using RaceJoy tremendously. My family signed on as spectators and were delighted with how accurate it was and the progress reports. The cowbells were a nice touch. They were able to use the cheers functionality as well. Everything worked fine for me as a participant also. Great product, thank you.”

RaceJoy issued close to 1,500 GPS progress alerts at every mile on the course, which alerted participants and spectators to the participant’s location, pace and estimated finish time.

Another Charlottesville Marathon race participant, Rheannon, gave the following feedback:

“I never actually looked at my phone during the race . . . it was in the backpack of my running partner, but I could hear the alerts. My fiancé used the app to keep track of us during the race and it was great to have him waiting for us at the finish line. He really appreciated being able to see where we were so he could better plan when to arrive at the finish line.”

We will be tracking runners at 15 different races across the country this weekend! A record weekend for RaceJoy! So, if you are doing a race this weekend, check to see if it is loaded in RaceJoy.

If you are a race organizer and would like to get your race added to RaceJoy, simply enable RaceJoy in the RunSignUp GO platform and provide your course map electronically (KML, GPX or link to map). You can also email this to addrace@racejoy.com. We require a minimum of two weeks to load and will send you a notice and promotion toolkit once it is active. This is free to the event and the participant and spectator pay a 99 cents per race upgrade fee.